PSU Sociology Department

John Bershaw (professor and outgoing Geology chair) and Iris S. De Lis (Sociology graduate student) launched The AI Commons at PSU, an informal gathering space for faculty, staff, and administrators at PSU who want to critically explore AI together as a public‑good issue, not a tech fad. We meet every two weeks and folks can learn more and get on our list here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_2y1xX8qmo1UzsdyiFqGdos5ciRGyUjbTNtAqokL5c/edit?tab=t.0

Lindsey Wilkinson (Sociology faculty), Melissa Thompson (Sociology faculty), and Jae Collett (Sociology graduate student). Forthcoming. “Transgender and Gender Diverse Identity, Mental Health Conditions, and Mental Health Care in U.S. Prisons.” Journal of Correctional Health Care, doi: 10.1177/10783458261447499.

(Sociology graduate student) applied for the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness Summer Fellowship.

Jae Collett (Sociology graduate student) successfully defended their thesis, "Intersectional Pathways to Prison and Sentence Disparities: Exploring the Role of Race, Gender Identity, and Sexuality in Women's Sentencing Outcomes" with the support of their committee chair, Melissa Thompson, and committee members Shirley A. Jackson and Emily Shafer (all Sociology faculty).

Hyeyoung Woo (Sociology faculty) organized an invited talk, “The Hitchhiker's Guide to Social Network Analysis,” by Dr. Eun Kyong Shin, an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Korea University and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University (2025-2026) for the graduate students in the Department of Sociology at PSU.

Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer (Sociology graduate student), Paula England, Madi Lou Abel (Sociology graduate student), and Tamara Ogle (Sociology graduate student). Conditionally Accepted. “Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Perceived Parental Responsibility: Patterns by Parent Gender, Child Gender, and Whether the Sexual Behavior is with a Same-Sex Partner.” In Parenting and Gender: Practices, Ideologies, and Inequalities Across Contexts, Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research. Edited by Dr. Gokhan Savas and Sampson Lee Blair. Leeds, UK: Emerald Publishing.

Madi Lou Abel (Sociology graduate student) was hired for a summer internship with The Educational Innovation and Improvement (EII) team and the Foster Respectful and Equitable Education (FREE) team at OHSU!!

(Sociology graduate student) was accepted to present, “The Place I Can’t Be”: LGBTQ+ Internal Displacement and the Limits of Sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest" at the LGBTQIA2S+ Studies in the Sociology of Sexualities Panel at the 2026 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association [co-authors: Miriam Abelson (Chair of PSU’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and Amy Lubitow (Environmental Science and Management faculty)].🎉🎉

Please join Portland State’s Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for an evening with Cherríe Moraga as we celebrate our 50th Anniversary as a program during our annual Walk of the Heroine’s Event. A reading and hosted conversation on the past, present, and future of our feminist and q***r lives.

Books will be available onsite for purchase from Always Here Bookstore

Who: Free and Open to the Public

When: Thursday, May 14th, at 5pm

Where: Hoffman Hall, 1833 SW 11th Ave, Portland, OR

About: Cherríe Moraga is an internationally recognized poet, essayist and playwright whose professional life began in 1981 with her co-editorship of the groundbreaking feminist anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. The author of several collections of her own writings, including: A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, Loving in The War Years, The Last Generation and Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Q***r Motherhood. Moraga is the recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship for Literature and the American Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award, among numerous other honors. As a dramatist, her awards include an NEA, two Fund for New American Plays Awards, and the PEN West Award. In 2017, Moraga’s most recent play, Mathematics of Love, premiered at Brava Theater Center in San Francisco. In the same year, she began her tenure as a Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where with her partner, visual artist Celia Herrera Rodriguez, she instituted Las Maestras Center for Xicane Indigenous Thought, Art, and Social Praxis. Her most recent memoir, Native Country of the Heart, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2019. In 2023, Haymarket Books published updated anniversary editions of Waiting in the Wings and Loving in the War Years. In 2024, Moraga became a Distinguished Professor Emerita In English, UC Santa Barbara.

This event is wheelchair accessible. To request a further reasonable accommodation or discuss your needs, contact [email protected].